7 Ways to Build a Stronger Portfolio

We have Charles Handy to thank for popularizing the idea of the portfolio career.

It was a concept Handy first adopted in his own life. He explains, “I created what I call ‘a portfolio life’, setting aside 100 days a year for making money, 100 days for writing, 50 days for what I consider good works, and 100 days for spending time with my wife.

“I mark these days out in my diary. When people phone and ask me to do something, I can then say, ‘I’m terribly sorry, that’s my day  with my wife’.

“It is a freeing way of life. A 100 days a year for me is enough for making money, there is no point in making more; and I find I do as much work in 100 days as I used to in a year.”

Of course, you know that I’m a big advocate of this approach. The single lifetime career is over. Thank goodness.

Your portfolio is as unique as your fingerprint. No two are ever exactly alike. Here are some things to keep in mind.

° Give new ideas a fighting chance.  Few of us know what our best ideas will ultimately be. A smart entrepreneur starts quickly, abandons slowly.

I like Phil Laut’s suggestion that you make a commitment to stick with each new project until it has earned at least $100. (There’s that magic number again.) Then evaluate whether or not to continue.

° Assemble different sizes. In my Making a Living Without a Job seminars I talk about the Mall Model.  Anyone who’s visited a large shopping mall knows that the popular building format has been one that includes a large anchor store on each corner with smaller shops of varying sizes in between.

Your portfolio can mirror that notion with several major income sources and a variety of smaller ones. Not only does this approach expand your skills, it also is a proven way to eliminate boredom.

Bonus idea: create your own Mall Model Vision Map and hang it in your world headquarters. Keep filling up the spaces between your anchor clients with as many smaller incomes sources as you can handle.

° Keep challenging your imagination. Alice Barry introduced me to a fun website that had my mind racing as I thought of new possibilities.  In fact, I’ve come to think of it as a gym for your entrepreneurial spirit.

If you haven’t participated, I urge you to check out, http://www.fiverr.com a site that bills itself as  the place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5. Pay Fiverr a visit and challenge yourself to create a $5 offer. Warning: this is also the perfect place to do a bit of impulse shopping.

° Trap ideas as they arrive. “I’ll never forget that idea is the Devil’s whisper,” warned Richard Bach. I suspect you’ve heard the whisper, as have I.

One of the easiest ways to avoid losing a good idea is to have a physical place to store them as they come. It could be a box that holds articles and lists of interesting possibilities or a computer file.

Building an inventory of options not only makes financial sense, it also gives you a place to search on the mornings you get up and aren’t sure how you want to spend your day.

° Play the Ubiquity Game. While some folks are busy ranting about social media as a big waste of time, others are quietly tweeting and friending their way to bigger and better businesses.

I’ll say it again: we all like to do business with people we know and like. If people don’t know you, they can’t like you.

Show up. Participate. Connect. Get busy building relationships with kindred spirits near and far.

Challenge yourself to find new and different ways to get the word out about who you are and what you have to offer.

° Pay attention to yearly cycles. Some of your profit centers will operate all year long, but others will have a season when they’re most robust. Figuring out those cycles makes planning your time more effective.

For example, I discovered that adult ed classes did really well in southern cities in July and August, but slowed to a crawl in places like Minnesota where summertime was devoted to outdoor activities. Once I saw the pattern, I scheduled my seminars to take advantage of those cycles.

° Take inventory regularly.  Review your offerings and eliminate those you’ve out-grown or become bored with to create space for new ideas.

After all, running a portfolio business is about creating something that reflects who you are now—not who you were then. And remember this bit of advice from Charles Handy:  “If somebody asks what you do, and you can reply in one sentence, you’re a failure. You should need half an hour.”

Welcoming the Year of the Dragon

Dragons have been everywhere the past few days as the countdown began to the Chinese Year of the Dragon. Why all the commotion?

A bit of investigation revealed that there’s much to be excited about when the Dragon Year rolls around.

I was particularly intrigued by the bit of the forecast which proclaimed that Dragon Years are lucky for anyone thinking of starting a business or initiating a new project of any sort.

When I named my Saturday project Restore Order, I didn’t realize that I was participating in the Chinese ritual of cleaning to welcome the Lunar New Year.

Then I read an article on Sunday about making preparations. I was delighted to see that my Saturday frenzy had included many of the suggestions.

Sweeping the front entrance, I read, was especially important if I wanted to welcome good fortune this year.

What other rituals could enhance health, wealth and happiness?

I decided to revisit an article I’d written several years ago for Winning Ways newsletter after my friend Jill introduced me to the principles of feng shui. After she bought a new house she also bought a book on feng shui and  said, “I want good energy in this place.”

I began investigating for myself and learned that feng shui masters were concerned with more than where to place one’s bed. They had, in fact, developed a list of principles for improving business.

For instance, to get the new year off to a prosperous start, they recommend greeting a new stranger every day for 27 days. I had no idea why that was important, but thought it sounded like fun so I challenged myself to do so.

Then there were  suggestions for enhancing your workspace. You can add good energy to your business with one or several of these suggestions.

° To invite opportunity to knock, fix your front door. Allow no sticking or wobbling door knobs. (I also have a jazzy welcome mat outside of mine.)

° To further your opportunities, unblock doorways and remove stored items from behind doors. (Clutter delays success.)

° To support your vision and commitment, sit at a desk that is spacious, allowing room for the expansion of your ideas.

° To meet this year’s challenges, see in your mind’s eye the faces of five people who can help you. (You could also post their pictures in your office.)

° To call forth a clear vision, hang a brass chime just inside your office door.

° To think creatively, hang a mirror to the right and to the left of your desk.

° To cultivate good luck, place fresh flowers in your office. (I’m thinking that I’ll gather some of the lovely pear blossoms blooming on the trees outside my office window.)

° Place your desk facing the door with your back to a sold wall rather than a window.

Most importantly, make your workspace a place where you love to be, filled with images that make your heart sing, that remind you of your dreams.

Happy Lunar New Year!

On Seeking Advice

Steve Merritt grew up in Iowa dreaming of a life of social activism. When he told his high school counselor that he wanted to find a solution to world hunger, the counselor scoffed and said he needed a more practical career plan.

Following that advice, he ended up in the cable television industry earning lots of money and little personal satisfaction.

Eventually Merritt turned his growing discontent into a life-changing event and today he happily heads up a community garden project in California.

Merritt’s story is a great reminder of the dangers of well-meaning advice.

Here are some things to consider when receiving advice so you can sort the wheat from the chaff.

Rule #1: Consider the Source

The most important thing about receiving advice is that you know your source and trust them. I was once reading a newsletter written by a woman I have watched build a lovely business.

One of the articles really struck me as special and I e-mailed her suggesting that she send it to some other publications. (Okay, I confess that violates my own policy of giving unsolicited advice.)

She wrote back saying that she had thought about submitting some of her newsletter material to other markets, but someone had told her that she couldn’t do that since it was already published.

I was flabbergasted. Who would have given her that erroneous advice?

If it was a professional writer giving the advice, they would have known about resubmitting material. If it wasn’t a professional writer who told her this, why would she have listened?

This isn’t an isolated incident. We’ve all probably allowed inaccurate advice to influence us.

Sometimes it happens because the advice-giver sounds authoritative and so we look no further. At other times, maybe out of laziness, we accept negative or discouraging words as an excuse for not giving something a try.

And sometimes we just don’t know if the advice is accurate. (This is a particularly new and thorny problem caused by the Internet where advice is posted but not edited or verified.)

Rule #2 : Get a Second Opinion

While too many opinions or too much advice can serve to confuse us, if you’re exploring unknown territory, some serious research is in order before setting out.

Get advice from people who know what they’re talking about—and then get a back-up opinion or two.

I once got e-mail from a woman who said that all of her life she’d wanted to be a professional caricaturist, but everyone told her she couldn’t make her living doing that.

I asked her if she was getting advice from other caricaturists.

Having numerous opinions from uninformed sources doesn’t make the information accurate. Having several opinions from experienced sources is another matter altogether.

Rule #3: Make the Most of It

When you ask the advice of another person, your initial role is to be a quiet listener or to ask clarifying questions. Whether or not you act upon the advice is a matter for a later time.

When you’re trying to make a decision or need information so you can proceed with a decision you’ve already made, seeking outside input is just part of the information-gathering process. Sifting comes after you’ve got all the information collected.

When you are the recipient of advice, whether you use it or not, don’t forget to say thank you. I mention that only because I’m stunned by the number of people who don’t bother with this courtesy.

The world is full of teachers, experts and amateur advisors—with varying qualifications. Jess Lair once said, “When I’m working on my life, I want the very best teachers I can find.”

Finding the right ones to help you learn what you need to know so you can move forward in your own life is not to be taken lightly. The experience of others can save us time, add deeper insights, prevent us from making costly mistakes.

Ask those who can help, not hinder, your success.

 

 

 

 

Just Pay Attention, Please

After a career in the insurance industry, Dave left to start his own business. Unfortunately, he chose an enterprise that seemed to be financially promising, but didn’t really come from his heart.

After two years, the business folded—and Dave was ready to pay attention to the dream that had nagged him for years.

What really excited him was the idea of doing seminars and speeches. In fact, he recalls, he spent years going to see every speaker he could.

“I’m not sure I ever heard much of what they said,” he confesses, “because I was always so busy watching how they delivered their message—and I kept wishing it was me on the stage.”

As Dave discovered, we may find our dream by paying attention to someone who is living theirs.

I’ve been doing housework for as long as I can remember. As the oldest of five children, I was handed a mop early on.

While I would never pretend to love cleaning house, I do love the outcome so I do my best to focus on the results I’m going for on housecleaning days.

My daughter, on the other hand, decided it makes more sense to turn housecleaning chores over to professionals. On a visit to her home, I watched in amazement as the cleaners came through her house and had it sparkling in no time.

What really grabbed me was that these professionals approached it in a completely different—and far more efficient—way than I had ever done.

I paid as much attention as I could without interfering with their work and I’ve adopted  many of their methods.

Everyday millions of people get up to do their work. A handful of  them will do it with excellence, joy and delight. Whether they’re fixing a leaky faucet or performing a concerto, when you see such a person, pay diligent attention.

Open your heart and mind to fully appreciate their performance. You don’t even have to analyze what they’re doing or how they do it.

You may, however, silently affirm that you want to deliver your goods and services with as much passion as you see them doing. By noticing and appreciating excellence in others, you expand your own capacity to produce it.

The January 16, 2006 issue of Time magazine had a special section on How to Sharpen Your Mind. One of the articles in this section was a profile of financial guru Suze Orman who has built an information empire as an author, columnist, speaker and TV personality.

So she must be a multi-tasker to accomplish all this, correct?

Not at all. Orman is a master at focusing on one thing at a time. “I came to this conclusion after watching the way racehorses win,” she says. “They come out of the gate with blinders on and go for the finish line.”

Orman does the same. “I don’t care what my competition is doing, I don’t care how their books are selling. All I care about is what I do, and I do absolutely nothing else while I am doing it.”

The reason why we fail to see much of the excellence around us or fail to focus like Suze Orman does is that we live in a world that’s loaded with distractions. Cellphones ring,, sirens blare, traffic and airport noise increases every year, and our attention is diverted without our even noticing.

While we may not be able to eliminate every distraction, we can practice paying closer attention to the things that inspire or inform or teach us—and lower the volume on distracting things.

Do so and you’ll be enhancing your capacity to focus.

The rewards are great as Danny Gregory points out  The Creative License. He writes, “The world is always full of  opportunity, of possibilities, of stimuli, of pots of gold.

“When you finally start to look around, to see clearly, to live in the now and dump your baggage, you can’t help but notice. When you notice the world, you notice it noticing you.

“You hear lyrics to songs you used to fast-forward through. You read poems carved in monuments. You open your fortune cookies. Small wonder the world suddenly seems to be flowing your way. It always did but perhaps you were too busy paddling upstream to notice.”

 

Leave Room for Serendipity

Blogs and ezines have been filled with messages urging us to get those goals and plans set for the new year. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.

Not only is goal-setting a popular tool for gaining focus and clarity, it’s also a fine time management tool.

Far fewer writers have been recommending that we incorporate serendipity into our plans. That’s not surprising since the popular definition of this word suggests that it means a happy accident, something unexpected.

That seems contrary to the Get Focused on Concrete Goals advice.

However, as I learned from Marcus Bach’s The World of Serendipity, there’s more to it than that. As Bach points out, the word originated with a story by Hugh Walpole written in 1754 and called The Princes of Serendip.

This tale featured three young noblemen who traveled the world, rarely finding the treasures they were looking for. Nevertheless, they continually ran into other treasures equally great or even greater which they were not seeking.

In looking for one thing, they found something else. “Even though their goals eluded them,” writes Bach, “they were more than rewarded with their wayside discoveries.”

What Walpole was writing about goes well beyond the occasional happy surprises. The key to having regular experiences of serendipity does not occur if we’re sitting on our sofa wishing something exciting—a windfall, a new opportunity, perhaps—would drop into our laps.

Serendipity happens when we’re on our way to a dream, actively engaged in doing what we can to bring it to life. Along the way, we may discover something bigger and better comes to us, something that more than compensates for our failure to reach the original goal.

Marcus Bach shares how serendipity has played a role in his writing career. He says that  he always sends out a new manuscript with high expectations.

“But every once in a while a manuscript comes back. It is then that my faith in serendipity comes in. I affirm that though I did not reach the initial goal, there will be a wayside goal just as good, or better, waiting for me.

“In some twenty-five years of writing, every manuscript of mine that was rejected eventually turned out advantageously for me. Either I improved it, profited from the rejection, placed it elsewhere, adapted it for radio or television.

“I can only conclude that if things work this way with manuscripts, they work this way with life if we are sincerely serendipitous and hold to great expectations.”

So by all means keep designing new quests and see where they lead, but stay alert to all the unexpected rewards of the journey.

Justice Cardozo concurs. “Like many of the finest things in life, like happiness and tranquility and fame, the gain that is most precious is not the thing sought, but one that comes of itself in the search for something else.”

Sounds like a paradox, I know, but that just adds to the fun.

Have you noticed?

 

Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve

When I opened my mailbox at the post office, I found a note and magazine article from Sandy Dempsey. She said she’d been going through a stack of magazines and, “When I came across this lovely interview with Bill Bryson I thought of you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.”

The article made me smile, but I was genuinely pleased that Sandy had thought of me when she read it.

A few days earlier, I received an e-mail from Charles McCool, mastermind of McCool Travel, telling me that his family is planning a trip to Venice. Did I have any tips? Recommendations? Things not to miss?

Of course, I did, but it made me smile that he’d consulted me.

On Thursday evening, I had a surprise call from Vancouver resident Sally Laird. “Guess where I am,” she said. I thought a moment and guessed, “Las Vegas.”

“Yup,” she laughed, “at the Bellagio. Eating gelato.”

Sally is well aware of my fondness for both.

Then there was the inquiry from my sister Nancy wanting to know about Kiva and how to become a lender.

These sorts of things happen to me on a regular basis and I never get tired of people thinking of me when they encounter something they know I love.

My true loves are not a secret.

Anyone who spends time with me discovers my fondness for Bryson, Venice, the Bellagio, gelato, Kiva—and dozens of other things. I’ve probably posted links to articles on all those subjects on Facebook.

Anyone who visits my home can see that I live surrounded by images, books and other evidence of my true loves.

I’ve never seen the point of keeping passion to myself, although I was frequently advised to do so. “Oh, Barbara,” my mother would sigh,  “you wear your heart on your sleeve.”

She did not mean it as a compliment.

“In the moment of knowing  a love,” I once heard Ray Bradbury advise, “intensify it.” For me, sharing a passion is one way of adding intensity to it.

Passion is, after all, often contagious. Before I became friends with Georgia Makitalo, I knew nothing of the Romantic artists known as the Pre-Raphaelites. Before long, Georgia’s enthusiasm had me joining her on excursions to see their work in Toronto, Delaware and London.

I was only vaguely aware of architect Frank Lloyd Wright before my friend Jill McDermott began telling me of her passion for his work. We made a pilgrimage to his home in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Eventually, she and I made a road trip which included explorations of his buildings in Oak Park, IL and Fallingwater, his masterpiece in Pennsylvania. When Jill moved near his home, Taliesin, in Spring Green, I attended her first outing as a tour guide there.

Having passionate friends has consistently enriched my life. And passion is an essential  ingredient if you want to create a business that is worthy of your time and energy.

Quite simply, building a business with passion as the cornerstone makes the process so much easier. It’s obvious that passion pulls you forward, keeps curiosity alive, connects you with kindred spirits.

It’s the X Factor that makes you magnetic.

Best of all, you get to wear your heart on your sleeve all the time.

So how do you display your passion? Feel free to leave a comment and share.

 

 

Seeing Boosts Believing

It’s a noisy world out there. Distractions abound. Then there’s Resistance tempting us to neglect our most valuable dreams.

While visualization and affirmations are popular manifesting tools, adding visual reminders can keep you from forgetting your focus. Happily, there are many ways to add visuals to your journey.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was searching for the perfect wall calendar for 2012. At this time last year, I was settling into my new home with its treetop views and added to the pleasure with a calendar of treehouses from around the world.

Since 2011 was about putting down roots, the new year is going to be focused on growing wings. My new calendar of gorgeous scenes from Tuscany will be a constant reminder of the big wide world I want to explore.

Here are some other tried and true favorites for adding positive energy to our goals and dreams.

° Write it down. I don’t know a single goal-setting system that doesn’t begin by urging us to pick up a pen. As Patricia T. O’Conner points out, “An idea in your head is merely an idle notion. But an idea written down, that’s the beginning of something.”

° Put yourself in the picture. Several years ago, my daughter asked me to visualize her driving a red Honda CRV. When we happened to pass that very car parked at the Pasadena Flea Market, I asked her to stand beside it so I could take a picture.

She and I both posted that picture where we could see it frequently. Within a few months, Jennie was standing beside her very own red Honda.

Whether you want to see yourself speaking to enthusiastic audiences or trekking through Nepal, find a picture of your ideal situation and paste yourself in it. Or, if you’re handy, photoshop yourself in.

° Carry a talisman.When I was visiting my sister in Athens, Greece, she took me to a shop which sold small metal plates embossed with a variety of pictures. Nancy told me that people used these to enhance their prayers.

If they were praying for a healing, for instance, they’d buy one of these plates with a picture of the body part that needed aid.

Ralph Charell is an enthusiastic advocate. He wrote, “Putting aside any consideration of the supernatural attributes or powers of talismans, they provide a convenient, portable, three-dimensional, concrete focus for galvanizing goal-directed thought into productive action.”

I once met a young man who was wearing a stunning crystal necklace. He told me about an exciting opportunity that had come to him.

”Do you think your necklace is responsible?” I asked.

“No,” he smiled. “I think it’s my talent. The crystal helps me remember to use it.”

° Join the vision board fan club. As your vision grows and changes, create a poster to reflect those new directions. (If you need help getting started there are several good books including Joyce Schwarz’s The Vision Board.)

Almost everyone I know who regularly creates a vision board reports coming across one from the past that they’ve tucked away and discovering how many things they’d posted that are now a regular part of their lives.

It’s a fun exercise that has the built-in bonus of helping you edit out things that you’re less than passionate about in order to make room for what matters most.

Barbara Sher once said, “When you think your dreams are impossible, that makes them invisible.”

Quite simply, adding visibility before dreams manifest, increases the odds that they will arrive—perhaps when you least expect them. So gather words and pictures of what you’re working for and keep them in sight.

You might just amaze yourself.

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Ready to up your commitment to the Joyfully Jobless Journey?  Here’s a great power tool. Join Terri Belford and me in Las Vegas on January 28 & 29 and get 2012 off to a successful start. Early Bird enrollment ends on 12/31/11.

 

 

Barely Committed

Commitment is about being there when it’s not convenient or easy. It’s about steadfastness in the face of change and crisis. ~ Mary Pipher

Commitment comes in all sizes and shapes and levels of intensity. Sadly, when it comes to dreambuilding, many people make only feeble attempts.

A woman I’ll call Leslie comes to mind. Although she professes a desire to live a creative, self-employed life, her attempts to make that happen are repeatedly thwarted. In fact, if you have the stamina to listen to her story, you’ll hear about years of being a victim of the most pathetic circumstances which have conspired to keep her stuck.

Whenever I see Leslie, I can’t help but picture YES, BUT tattooed on her forehead, because that favorite expression will be countering any suggestions I might make in response to her questions about improving her life.

From her perspective, she’s a modern version of Sisyphus, the ancient Greek eternally condemned to rolling a boulder uphill only to have it roll back to the bottom again. Sadly, Leslie seems committed to her belief that life is treacherous—and she’s got proof.

”Behind 99 out of 100 assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing but the unwillingness to do it,” said William Feather.

When we’re barely committed, we’re rarely going to win. It might sound backwards to commit ourselves to winning before we even begin, but that’s the way it works.

Entrepreneurs commit themselves to market products and services before they know how the market will respond. They decide first to sell and then create their own markets afterwards.

The same is true for education: we commit ourselves to continuing education and seminars and college degrees before any learning takes place.

We commit ourselves to being parents before we hold a child in our arms.

My friend Chris once told me about spending time on the phone with a woman named Carol who was struggling with her business. As Chris—who was brilliant at seeing possibilities—pointed out several positive outcomes, Carol weakly replied, “I hope so.”

Chris hung up the phone and had a revelation. As she told me later, “I suddenly realized that when people say, ‘I hope so,’ they’re actually saying, ‘I don’t believe it.’”

Commitment’s not about hoping:  it’s believing beyond any shadow of doubt that what you envision can and will happen even when you have no idea how that will take place.

At first glance it would seem that making a commitment is a verbal act. That could be part of it, but verbal commitments mean very little if our behavior isn’t in alignment.

For example, studies reveal that millions of people who have taken a public vow to be faithful to their spouse chronically break that commitment. And who hasn’t waited for a service repairman who failed to show up at the time they agreed to? Or a friend who is never on time?

Keeping our commitments is an act of integrity—even when we don’t feel like it. That’s something the barely committed don’t understand, but parents quickly learn that they must take care of their children when they’re being lovable and when they’re not.

Same goes for taking care of our dreams. Whether the commitment is a big one or a little one, integrity assumes that we’ll do what we said we were going to do.

At the end of a talk in London, a young woman handed me a piece of paper with the best quote I’ve seen on the subject.

It simply read, “Definition of commitment: doing the things you’d said you’d do, long after the mood in which you said them in has left you.”

That’s a definition worth remembering.

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Ready to up your commitment to the Joyfully Jobless Journey? Join Terri Belford and me in Las Vegas on January 28 & 29 and get 2012 off to a successful start.

 

6 Success Traits Worth Mastering

Trying to build a business without entrepreneurial thinking is like trying to build a house with a toothbrush. An employee mindset is not a useful tool.

Fortunately, learning to think like a successful self-bosser is something we can teach ourselves. Here are some proven ways for expanding entrepreneurial consciousness.

° Make persistence your personal trademark. We’ve all heard the stories of the multiple experiments conducted by Thomas Edison before he figured out how to make a light bulb. Edison’s not the only one, of course, to succeed by not giving up.

During the remarkable renaissance of Tina Turner a few years back, the entertainer remarked, “I’m just now reaping the rewards for 25 years of hard work.” That persistence landed her on many  Most Admired Lists, too.

By the way, psychologists and others who have studied the lives of successful people rate persistence as more important than intelligence.

° Embrace repetition. Most people operate on a limited budget of ideas. When one or two things don’t work out, they quit. Like persistence, constant practice is also a trademark of the successful.

If you need to be reminded that excellence requires repeated effort, consider this: when GQ magazine celebrated a milestone, they put Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, two of the most photogenic creatures on Earth, on the cover. The photographer who took the cover shot used 63 rolls of film to get the perfect picture.

° Reframe the way you think about a current job, if you have one. Stop thinking that your job is a permanent condition but merely your first profit center, the one that allows you to generate cash flow while you create your next one.

Thinking of yourself as a service provider, not an employee, will change your relationship. If you start thinking of your job as a profit center, chances are greater that you’ll be saying good-bye to it sooner.

° Have a phantom mentor. If you could pick anyone, living or dead, to advise you, who would it be? Pick someone you admire greatly and have imaginary conversations with them. It’s not as weird as it sounds.

Or start asking yourself, “What would an entrepreneur do?” and see what answers spring to mind.

° Find the hidden gift in goalsetting. A few years ago, I was considering buying both a desktop and a laptop computer, but unsure of which to get first.

On a flight to Amsterdam, my seatmate was a pleasant man who told me he worked for a company that made hinges for laptops. I had no idea that this was a thriving specialty industry and I bombarded him with questions.

When I told him I was planning to get an iBook, he said, “They’re coming out with something spectacular. If you can wait until August, do. I can’t tell you any more about it since what I know is confidential.”

Later, I realized that there’s a gift given to goalsetters and it’s this: when you are clear about your goals, life suddenly is filled with recognizable coincidences.

° Let love lead. A  friend and I went to a sold out concert of Clannad, the Irish band, at  London’s Royal Albert Hall. As we were leaving, I said, “Imagine saying, ‘Let’s start singing Celtic folk songs. I’m sure that will be a hit.’”

Of course, Clannad did nothing of the sort. They  simply determined that they would spend their lives sharing the music that they loved, knowing that they wouldn’t be alone.

How many others shared that love was something they couldn’t know ahead of time. There’s not always a way to do market research when love is your motive.

Trusting your instincts, however, can lead you to your perfect place.

 

6 Ways to Move Past Your Doubts and Get On With It

 

It is not an exaggeration to say that we spend our days moving closer to our dreams—or farther away. Every moment that we invest in our goals brings us closer and every moment we ignore the prompting of our hearts takes us somewhere else.

When people tell me that  fear is a huge obstacle, I am quit certain that they have misdiagnosed the problem. Most of the time we are bewitched by self-doubt, not genuine fear (unless a tiger is about to devour us).

Self-doubt can afflict anyone, of course. When this occurs, the healthy approach is to combat it with action rather than remaining inert. The more alternatives you have for dealing with those tenuous times, the more quickly you’ll move through them.

If you quake at the thought of going out on your own and setting up shop, or are nervous about embarking on a new venture, here are six fearbashers that can reroute you back to the road to success.

° Do temporary work. March into a temporary help agency and get signed up for a short term project. When you get an assignment, don’t  think of this primarily as a way to earn money. Use this project to do some homework.

No matter what business you are sent to work in, observe what goes on in a detached and analytical manner.  You’ll quickly discover that all sorts of mistakes and mishaps (even stupid decisions) will be part of every day.

Now notice that despite this lack of perfection, the business manages to stay afloat. Notice that every business has huge margins for error and it doesn’t bring them crashing to their knees.

You can certainly do better than that, can’t you? So get out there and do it.

° Study a successful immigrant entrepreneur. A high percentage of people who come to the US from other parts of the world start their own businesses.

Imagine how much harder that would be in a strange culture where you may not speak the language. Yet, many of these newcomers have such a strong desire to build something of their own, a desire that they couldn’t fulfill in their homeland, that the obstacles melt in the face of that determination.

We natives often look like wimps next to the hardworking and committed businessowners who have been drawn to this land of opportunity. Let them inspire you.

° Fail on purpose. Young children try new things without thinking of success and failure. As we get older, many of us avoid any situation where we might not be brilliant. As a result, our world shrinks down to a short list of acceptable activities. This is not the road to self-actualization.

If you are terrified at the thought of failing, make a list all the things you are an utter klutz at doing. Then do something from that list once a week. At the very least, you may entertain your friends when you throw three gutter balls in a row.

At the other end of this temporary humiliation is all the power you’ll gain by surviving a minor failure.

° Develop a big roar. Next time you’re driving alone in your car, pretend you’re the Lion King or Queen. It worked in The Wizard of Oz and it will work for you, too. No kidding.

° Make Nathan Lane your patron saint. In 2000, the wildly talented Lane starred in his own television series which was downright awful. It was so terrible, in fact, that it only ran for a few painful episodes.

Had it been even mildly successful, Lane would have been taping the series instead of wowing audiences in The Producers, a big Broadway hit for which he won the Best Actor Tony  in 2001.

If you try something that turns out badly, think of it as your own failed series—and celebrate the end of your contract.

° Imagine your success. I am convinced that most people fail to go after their dreams or leave their comfort zones because they haven’t taken the time to really think about what rewards their ultimate success would bring them.

Instead, they console themselves by saying things like, “Well, this job or relationship or apartment isn’t really that bad.”

However, when you are focused on the rewards that will inevitably come, setbacks and disappointments are easier to handle. Often, in truth, what looks like a setback is just a resetting of the course and may, in the long run, make the journey sweeter.

That’s why it’s so important to be willing to defer short-lived gratification in order to have something grander in the future. But first you must envision it and sell yourself on the new and better life you foresee.